**"It's Criminal": Central Wisconsin Communities Unite To Stave Off Looming Wind Turbine Industry**
"It's Criminal": Central Wisconsin Communities Unite To Stave Off Looming Wind Turbine Industry
_Authored by Matt McGregor via The Epoch Times,_ (https://www.theepochtimes.com/in-depth-its-criminal-central-wisconsin-communities-unite-to-stave-off-looming-wind-turbine-industry_5268714.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge)
Central Wisconsin communities are coordinating efforts to shine a light into the flickering shadow cast by a looming wind turbine industry.
**“There is a revolt happening here,”** attorney Marti Machtan told The Epoch Times. **_“I’ve never seen our communities engage like this in my life.”_**
Machtan is a member of Farmland First (https://www.farmlandfirst.com/), an organization that aims to facilitate discussion among community members concerned about reported coercive, predatory tactics used by industrial wind companies to manipulate landowners into signing their property rights away in the name of green energy.
_**“These companies are sneaky about it,”**_ Tom Wilcox— also a member of Farmland First and chairman of the Town of Green Grove in Owen, Wisconsin—told The Epoch Times. “They don’t want to come right out and say how this will work. In fact, part of the reason why people don’t know this is happening is farmers have to agree to keep their mouth shut on the details of the contract.”
Wilcox is also on the Clark County Board of Supervisors and chairman of the Clark County Planning and Zoning.
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_Marti Machtan and Tom Wilcox at a farm free of wind turbines in Wisconsin in 2023. (Courtesy of Tom Wilcox)_
This month, at least 13 central Wisconsin towns have passed health and safety ordinances setting the ground rules for companies seeking to build wind turbines up to 600 feet tall as close as 1,250 feet from their homes.
The resolutions are written to mitigate the harm wind turbines have been reported to cause to people, their land, and their natural environment, including wildlife.
Word spread after some community members openly discussed rejecting alluring offers with payoffs of over $1 million over 30 years to have a wind turbine built on their farm.
However, Machtan argued that because turbine companies can exit the contract for any reason, the possibility of actually getting that amount wouldn’t be a safe bet.
For Wilcox, there are too many unanswered questions, like how it works and what it does to property values.
Initially, Wilcox said he held the attitude that people can do whatever they want with their farm.
“But as I got further into this, I realized that these wind turbines aren’t at all good for the farming community,” Wilcox said. “As I got deeper, I realized just what kind of a sham this really is.”
‘Imbalanced, Unfair, One-Sided’
Machtan has reviewed, negotiated, and drafted over a billion dollars worth of contracts with companies of various sizes.
His assessment of the contracts between farmers and wind turbine companies like RWE Clean Energy, which has advanced into central Wisconsin, is as bad as he’s ever read.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one that was more imbalanced, unfair, or one-sided to the benefit of the company and to the detriment of the farmer,” Machtan said.
Many provisions in these contracts give more power to the wind company over the land than the property owner.
The wind company can get out of the contract at any time for any reason, while the farmer must commit to a decade’s worth of encumbrances, Machtan said.
“There are liability shifting provisions for the big multi-billion-dollar multinational companies that shift risks onto these farmers,” he said.
There are also inadequate decommissioning standards, he added.
“One of the things people are worried about is, because this type of energy production really doesn’t make sense over the long term, there’s the risk that farmers are going to be left holding the bag,” Machtan said.
There’s no mutual sharing of opportunity and risk, Machtan said, leaving him to conclude that these aren’t green-energy projects.
_**“This is financial engineering designed to shift risk on the farmers and our communities while providing large stable returns to private equity,”**_ Machtan said. _**“What’s actually driving them is pension funds and other investors trying to get a stable return for their shareholders with as little risk as possible with the support of our federal and state government.”**_
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